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Forgotten position weighs heavily in No. 11 Iowa's gameplan

Coming out of tiny Stillman Valley High School in the farmland south of Rockford, Illinois, Adam Cox wasn't recruited by anyone to play football. He didn't have a star rating, or even a recruiting profile. So

Coming out of tiny Stillman Valley High School in the farmland south of Rockford, Illinois, Adam Cox wasn't recruited by anyone to play college football. He didn't have a star rating, or even a recruiting profile. So when he decided to walk on at Iowa, he just showed up to play football, whatever that might mean for him.

"I just came, open to play, really," Cox said.

There aren't a lot of places in major college football for lightly recruited high school running backs who are too slow to play running back, or linebackers who aren't athletic enough to play linebacker. Cox was simply a football player, so Iowa found him a spot for big guys who just love to play football: fullback.

"Obviously, no one's really dying to play fullback," Cox said. "It's a position, there's not much credit. It's a position a lot of walk-ons play, because walk-ons have to have a certain mindset. You need to be willing to do anything."

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The fullback is a rare breed in this day of spread offenses, and it is hardly ever a recruited position. Depending on the situation, a fullback is like an offensive lineman playing running back, or a running back playing on the line. Often, it's a void filled by linebackers hoping to find a ticket to the NFL.

"The NFL still uses them," said David Shaw, the coach of No. 8 Stanford, which is also known for its fullback use. "For us to be one of the few places that not only play with, we train fullbacks and tight ends. And those guys, if they're good enough, have a chance to play on the next level."

There is no real typical identity for what makes a fullback, other than just a really good, fundamentally sound football player. Whatever the team needs to be done on each specific play, the fullback can get it done.

"I like to say I'm more of a back, but I think my role most of the time, I guess would be like a glorified lineman," said Macon Plewa, Cox's running/blocking mate at fullback.

Plewa, who will start at the position for Iowa on Saturday against Maryland, has yet to run the ball this season. Like Cox, he walked on for the Hawkeyes, and he switched to fullback from linebacker when it became clear that was his only way to see the field.

But even though it may seem like fullback has been a utility position, where Iowa puts players who can't make it elsewhere, the position has been extraordinarily important to the 11th-ranked Hawkeyes' 7-0 start, their best start since 2009.

Part of the Hawkeyes' resurgence has been due to their improved rushing attack. Iowa is second in the Big Ten in rushing and 25th nationally, and three different Hawkeyes running backs have rushed for 100 or more yards in a game this season — Jordan Canzeri four times and LeShun Daniels and Akrum Wadley once apiece. That hasn't happened since 2005.

In wins against Illinois and Northwestern, Canzeri and Wadley gave Iowa back-to-back 200-yard games by different players, something that had never happened in Iowa history and had not happened with any FBS team since 1996.

But the biggest breakthrough in Iowa's run game is its explosiveness. Unlike in past years, when Iowa has relied on a bruising running back to get three yards and a cloud of dust — much like converted fullback Mark Weisman did at running back last year — this season the Hawkeyes have speedy running backs who have excelled in the open field.

As a result, they already have seven runs of 30 yards or more this season — good for 22nd in the nation — which is two more than they had all of last season. And they have five runs of 40 yards or longer, compared to just one last year. It's the fullback who opens up the holes for those big plays to happen.

"When he's on the field, it's a very important position," Iowa coach Kirk Ferentz said. "We use a fullback just as much as anybody."

The position has even given Iowa an advantage against other teams that aren't used to seeing fullbacks on a regular basis. "There was a point where you were unique if you were a spread team or whatever, and now it's going the other way," Ferentz said. "It's something we do, so maybe there is some competitive advantage in that."

Shaw appreciates the advantage that the broad turn away from fullbacks gives Stanford from a recruiting standpoint. "It's been helpful for us that there are not a lot of teams using them, because we get a chance to hopefully get as many as we need," he said.

If that competitive advantage exists at all, it was on display for Iowa against Northwestern in the game that vaulted Iowa into the top 15 of the national rankings and driver's seat of the Big Ten West race. Iowa rushed for 294 yards in that game, despite starting running back Jordan Canzeri leaving the game early on with an injury.

On the game's defining drive early in the third quarter, Iowa used a fullback on every big play, and it thoroughly confused Northwestern's linebackers. On a third-and-one near midfield, Plewa gave Northwestern outside linebacker Jaylen Prater no chance to tackle running back Akrum Wadley, who cleared the first down marker by about seven yards.

Without a fullback, Wadley would have been forced to move with the pile. But thanks to the block in front of him, he got the easiest first down of his career. The same thing happened on a third-and-two later in the drive. From the beginning, the play was doomed for Northwestern.

As expected, the linebacker was taken completely out of the play for an easy first down. Wadley even made the wrong decision, opting to stay inside rather than bounce outside, and he still got the first down before he was touched.

In the red zone, Northwestern tried mixing things up, bringing more pressure to overwhelm the fullback. But it didn't matter, as the linemen held their own and the fullback, in this case Cox, picked up the blitzing safety, so nobody was in Wadley's way.

Football is a numbers game. And just like spread teams have found clever ways to use space and the zone read to gain a numerical advantage on the defense, Iowa can essentially run at will, knowing it has fullbacks who will always hit their blocks and take the main defensive threat out of the equation. It can be especially effective against spread teams, which don't see fullbacks all through fall camp.

"At Iowa, we pride ourselves on being physical," Plewa said. "We feel like when we're lining up against teams that aren't taking on blocks like that, they're easier to break."

Such is the job of a fullback — break opponents. It's a simple, yet niche job, mostly reserved for the walk-ons of college football. Antiquated and unappreciative as it might be, Iowa is proving the fullback can still dominate in an increasingly fullback-less world.